The alleged $400,000 insider bet by a Green Beret on a Venezuelan raid initially seemed like an isolated incident. However, a new report by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC) indicates that this might be just the tip of the iceberg.
After analyzing over 435,000 markets and $54.4 billion in cumulative volume on Polymarket from January 2021 to mid-March 2026, the research group found that low-probability bets on military and defense outcomes achieved success rates that are difficult to attribute to skill or luck alone. Typically, such "longshot" bets succeed around 14% of the time across political markets, but in military-linked contracts, the success rates have reached as high as 50% in some cases. The authors of the report noted that markets related to specific government policies, including military and defense and foreign affairs, are particularly challenging to forecast using publicly available information.
This makes them more vulnerable to information asymmetries, including insider trading or specialized knowledge. As a result, a small group of informed traders can consistently outperform others, not just by reacting faster, but by possessing more knowledge.
Polymarket has emphasized its market surveillance teams and cooperation with the Department of Justice on the Venezuela case, highlighting that trading on confidential knowledge is prohibited on the platform. The ACDC report's findings contribute to a growing body of research pointing to the same issue.
A working paper from London Business School and Yale found that approximately 3% of traders are responsible for most price discovery on Polymarket. Separate analysis by blockchain analytics firm Solidus Labs revealed that profits are even more concentrated, with less than 1% of wallets capturing about half of all gains. The ACDC report examines the June 2025 U.S.
strikes on Iran as a case study, where Polymarket listed several date-specific contracts on whether a strike would occur. In the hours leading up to the strike, 19 longshot bets totaling $164,292 were placed across the contracts that ultimately resolved YES, with eight wallets sharing about $1.8 million in profits.
Despite the Pentagon's efforts to keep the operation clandestine, a small number of traders placed large, well-timed bets on the outcome. The report found that in five of the six two-hour windows before market resolution, winning longshot bets outnumbered losing ones, contrary to what market prices imply. While longshot bets can outperform due to mispricing or shifts in public expectations, the consistency of the patterns, especially in markets tied to military decisions, suggests that some participants may be operating with information advantages.
The ACDC, being a nonprofit research group, has recommended measures such as identity verification for bettors, conditional payouts on suspicious wagers, restrictions on markets whose outcomes are decided by small groups, and limits on how granular contracts can become. The report concludes by calling for an evidence-informed debate about whether the public should be betting on these outcomes at all.